John Stockwell might be best known for playing Cougar in Top Gun, but he's carved out a secondary career as a director of very specialist films. It was Stockwell who brought us Blue Crush, the film where Kate Bosworth wore a bikini and splashed around in the sea. He also brought us Into the Blue, the film where Jessica Alba wore a bikini and splashed around in the sea.

But John Stockwell's newest film is something of a departure. It's Dark Tide, a film where Halle Berry wears a bikini and splashes around in the sea – but it doesn't have the word "blue" in the title. But what does Dark Tide have to offer us? And what actually happens in it? Let's see what the Dark Tide trailer has to say.

1) Here's Halle Berry several years ago. Before James Bond. Before Monster's Ball. She's running a diving company off the coast of South Africa and things couldn't be going any better. Why look, she's just about to take a lucky customer down for the dive of his life. This might be tempting fate a little, but I'm confident that nothing could possibly go wrong.

2) Unless of course one of the divers gets eaten by a shark. Which is what happens. Distraught, and haunted by the memory of some guy getting his head chewed off, Halle Berry decides to give up the shark-diving business for good and head to Hollywood to make her name in the movie business.

3) Fast forward a decade or so and everything's gone wrong again. Whatever goodwill Halle Berry earned by winning her Oscar for Monster's Ball has gradually been eroded by a series of disappointing film choices. Eventually, she has to accept the inevitable. A shady businessman offers her a life-changing proposition – he'll give her a pile of money, but with a condition. Not only must she go back on her promise never to shark-dive again, but she has to make a film about it. Reluctantly, Halle Berry agrees.

4) At first, it all goes well. Halle even convinces the businessman to write her into the script as a kind of shark whisperer – a woman so spiritually attuned to the ocean that she can pacify sharks just by gazing at them with her big brown eyes. The Academy loves this sort of thing. Maybe if there's an evocative enough score to accompany scenes like this, she might be able to resuscitate her acting career for good.

5) However, there's a chance that all of Halle's acting and profound facial expression might be undone by the footage of the sharks. Look at this one, arcing through the air as it snatches its prey from the watery depths. In a film like this, the brutal majesty of the sharks are always going to receive top billing. If Halle Berry wants to be noticed in this movie, she's going to have to act her socks off.

6) Or, you know, she could just slowly unzip herself out of a wetsuit while a large caption reminds everyone that she won an Oscar once. That's more or less the same as acting, right?

7) And now even the seals are sticking their noses in. It's one thing to compete for top billing with a cold, dead-eyed shark – but with a seal? With an adorably inquisitive seal? Halle Berry's looking at third billing at this rate. At least Olivier Martinez is also in this film, otherwise she might find herself dead last. Agreeing to make Dark Tide was the worst career move she could have ever made. Time for something drastic.

8) Halle Berry locks herself in a metal cage and throws herself overboard. It was either that or make Catwoman 2, and a woman's got to have some dignity.